Holiday Shopping

More than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 147 million shoppers last year.

Shoppers spent an average of $372.57 this weekend, up 7.2 percent over last year’s $347.55. Total spending reached an estimated $41.0 billion.

We seem to have an arithmetic breakdown here. My calculator says this weekend’s numbers come to $64 billion, compared to $51 billion last year. That’s a 25% increase.

That seems implausible to me. On the other hand, it also seems implausible that 172 million times $372.57 equals $41 billion. So what’s going on?

POSTSCRIPT: For what it’s worth, the NRF’s methodology is to survey a bunch of people in an online poll and ask them how much they’ve spent this weekend. Every news outlet in the country reports the NRF numbers as gospel, but frankly, this approach strikes me as so dubious that I wonder if their numbers would mean anything even if they could get their arithmetic straight. It sure doesn’t jibe with the report of Wachovia analyst John Morris, who told the New York Times that “there was definitely more elbow room” in stores this year; or with ShopperTrak, which told them that sales increased only 3 percent on Friday; or with the numbers provided by Marshal Cohen of the NPD Group, who told them that Friday foot traffic was down 11 percent and the “shopping bag count” (whatever that is) was down 24 percent compared with last year. Very fishy, no? I blame the War on Christmas.

UPDATE: In comments, big truck notes that in the fine print NRF says that their 172 million number “includes same consumer shopping multiple days.” So maybe there were 110 million actual human beings spending $372 each, which would net out to $41 billion. However, applying the same logic to last year’s numbers still produces a 20% increase in total dollars spent this year ($41 billion vs. $34 billion), which seems wildly implausible. Why on earth does anyone take these figures seriously?